Newcastle University

Building on the success of his legendary 'Justice' course at Harvard, Michael Sandel’s influence as the world’s ‘most relevant living philosopher’ is rapidly expanding worldwide.  On stage and in writing, he deploys a unique and charismatic gift for empowering public participation in acute social and moral questions, such as: Should we financially reward children for good marks? Is it ethical to pay people to donate organs? Should a banker be paid more than a nurse? Should Universities give preference to poor applicants? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons or selling citizenship?  With the hardback publication in 2012 of What Money Can’t Buy, Sandel argued that market values have come to define our lives in ways that aren’t good for democracy or the quality of public or private life, and are in danger of corrupting the value we place on things such as children, the environment, and citizenship. From London to South Korea, hundreds, often thousands, flock to hear him speak and politicians are listening. In a period of rapid global cultural and economic change, now more than ever we require the highest quality of public interrogation and debate.

Michael Sandel is in a position to change the way we think.

Michael J Sandel is the Anne T and Robert M Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University. His legendary 'Justice' course is the first Harvard course made freely available online (www.JusticeHarvard.org) and on television and has attracted millions of viewers. His work has been translated into 21 languages and been the subject of television series in the U.K., the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and the Middle East. He has delivered the Tanner Lectures at Oxford and been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, Paris. In 2010, China Newsweek named him the "most influential foreign figure of the year". In Seoul, Korea, 14,000 people filled an outdoor stadium to hear him speak. Sandel was the 2009 BBC Reith Lecturer, and his recent book Justice was an international bestseller.  In April 2012 he presented a three-part BBC Radio 4 series ‘The Public Philosopher’.

This talk will be followed by a book signing.

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Praise for Michael Sandel

“…a wake-up call to recognise our desperate need to rediscover some intelligible way of talking about humanity” - Rowan Williams
 
"Michael Sandel...is currently the most effective communicator of ideas in English." - Guardian Editorial, 23 May 2012
 
"the most famous teacher of philosophy in the world," has "shown that it is possible to take philosophy into the public square without insulting the public’s intelligence." The New Republic, May 18 2012
 
“Brilliant, easily readable and often funny ... an indispensable book" - David Aaronovitch
 
“ … patient and so accumulative in its argument and its examples… marks a permanent shift in these debates' - John Lanchester
 
“Sandel's is the indispensable voice of reason” - John Gray
 
“ … genius” - FT